A Beautiful Pageant : African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910-1927

Rating:
Summary: A Time of Rebirth
Review: The Harlem Renaissance is defined by artlex.com as a literary and art movement in the uptown Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem, in the mid and late 1920's. In author David Krasner's A BEAUTIFUL PAGEANT, he provides a detailed capturing of a historical time when great pride and creativity for African Americans was not an unusual occurrence.

Many people tend to think of the Harlem Renaissance as a time when only literary notables such as Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes emerged, but it was so much more. There was a strong little theatre movement, great choreographers such as Ethel Waters and Aida Overton Walker, and most surprising to me, one of the most controversial sporting events of the time. The boxing match between Jack Johnson, a flamboyant and confident black fighter and Jim Jeffries who was known as "The Great White Hope", the hope of white people was that Jim Jeffries would prove that he was superior to the arrogant and inferior black man. When Jack Johnson was crowned the winner, it was a springboard to pride among African Americans.

Before I read this book I had a general view of what the Harlem Renaissance was about, but after finishing it, I have a much broader insight into this special era represented and produced. David Krasner is a very thorough writer and I was impressed with the attention to detail and the fact that the book was researched in depth. But as informative and knowledgeable as this book is, I was very frustrated while reading it because of the microscopic print which made it very difficult to read. If the font size of the print was larger this would have been a much more enjoyable read and my rating would have been a 4 instead of a 3.5. (RAW Rating: 3.5)

Reviewed by Simone A. Hawks
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers